


Anchor

by kiiouex



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: F/M, Noah's Spooky Ghost Stuff, Possession, Second person POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 09:03:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6073306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiiouex/pseuds/kiiouex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Where am I?” Noah whispers with your mouth, and then you swallow hard, like you’re trying to keep the words down and in. It feels like an actual weight on your mind, like his presence is pressing on you, like you’re trying to fit two people under one skin and now you’re straining at the seams. You just meant to give him your energy; you didn’t even know you could do this. You would have absolutely never done <i>this</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anchor

**Author's Note:**

> Usual shoutout to [telekinesiskid](http://archiveofourown.org/users/telekinesiskid) my beautiful beta who gives top-notch 'this isn't even shippy add some romance' advice. (She also does [fanart](http://tkscribbles.tumblr.com/))

Gansey calls rainy days ‘research opportunities’ which strikes you as both far too optimistic and also a waste of a good rainfall. You would like to be able to contemplate the way water filters through the canopy of your beech tree, or relax with something warm and enjoy the dampening effect rain has on the chaos at 300 Fox Way. At the very least, you should be able to pose romantically near a window.

But Gansey has ideas and his ideas are all inevitabilities, so you grudgingly accept the ride you’re offered, trust Gansey’s driving on the slick streets, and resign yourself to spending the day poring over research texts with only the occasional chance to dramatically trail your fingers over a fogged-up window. Disappointing, but bearable.

At least the boys are happy to see you; Ronan _almost_ looks up from drawing delicate graffiti on the model school when you walk in, and Adam gives you a vague sort of nod. Noah bounds up fast enough that you’re tempted to call it ghost-trickery, but no, he’s really that delighted by your presence, which is so sincere it warms your cynical, teenage heart. “Noah,” you say, greeting only him by name out of spite that’s wasted on the other two.

“Blue,” he says, and he always has a smile for you which is hugely preferable to the near-terror anxiety he seems to have for most other people. “I’m glad Gansey went to fetch you.”

“Jane has generously deigned to be here,” Gansey corrects him before you can, which grates. “And now that she is, we can make the most of this research opportunity –“ and thank god, two people besides you groan – “and evaluate the meteorological effects of impossible places.”

What he means is that you’re looking at weather, not geography, and what _that_ means is that instead of maps you all get to sprawl out over Henrietta weather reports and compare them to overall Virginia weather reports, and check the accuracy of predictions and anomalies and enough numbers that after an hour you feel like you’re drowning in them.

You heard that Helen once suggested you all use those new-fangled computer machines to speed up the search. Of course Adam couldn’t afford one, Ronan couldn’t be careful with one, Noah’s experience is with big, beige boxes that take five minutes to complete the smallest of tasks, and Gansey had just made a very sour face and muttered something about ‘tactile appeal’. You wish he’d just buy himself a damn MacBook and be what you expect him to.

“This whole year is an anomaly,” Noah reports brightly, but after the full group gathers around, Adam points out that he just got the only chart in Celsius instead of Fahrenheit. That is the highlight of the morning.

Wind rattles the huge factory windows, and you use the distraction as a chance to lean back and rub numerical afterimages from your eyes. Ronan’s lying on the pool table, ignoring Gansey’s occasional comments about preserving the felt, and Gansey is stretched out over-relaxed on his bed, Adam’s legs draped over him in an attempt to fit.

You and Noah took the couch together, and you lean back against him, easy and comfortable. He whispers little jokes to you while you both work, the kinds of comments that would be less funny if you were less bored, but you laugh and he smiles like the sound is precious. He doesn’t breathe, there’s no rise and fall of his chest for you to lean into, but when he laughs the little shake of his shoulders carries through to you, makes you feel warm. It’s almost worth reading weather reports for.

You’re just thinking about touching his hand when another howl of wind hits the glass, this one louder, wilder, somehow more violent. You’re just sitting up to stare, but then you _feel_ it, a second before it hits. A pulse in the ley line, a single, shuddering throb reaching out to seize all the magic in your world and shut it off. You catch Noah’s shocked expression, and you can still sense it, the yawning void stretching out to swallow him up, and you act on impulse. You reach out with your hand and all the power constrained to your fingertips, unconsciously offering. He lunges for you in the same moment, catching your hand with all his desperate fear of disappearing, and then –

He’s gone.

He is not gone. You feel heavy, and strange, and there is something buzzing _inside_ your skull that you do not understand. “Blue?” whispers Noah, in your voice, through your lips.

“Aaaa?” You make a strained, strangled little question, terror eating your articulation. The fingers on your left hand twitch, and you are not the one to move them. Your petrified heart beat might your own, or it might not be, or it could be two people’s fear in one body, peaks amplifying each other to a frenzied crescendo.

“Where am I?” Noah whispers with your mouth, and then you swallow hard, like you’re trying to keep the words down and _in_. It feels like an actual weight on your mind, like his presence is pressing on you, like you’re trying to fit two people under one skin and now you’re straining at the seams. You just meant to give him your energy; you didn’t even know you could do this. You would have absolutely never done _this_.

Ronan glances over to you and says, “Looks like the power’s out,” and Gansey makes a small, regretful noise, and you know that to them you are just Blue, albeit a Blue that is looking _more than a little freaked out_ , though they might be chalking that up to Noah’s disappearance too. They don’t realise that Noah has not disappeared.

 “How is this happening?” you demand in a whisper, hoping that maybe you can get him out without drawing any scholarly scrutiny.

“Energy,” Noah murmurs back miserably. You start to reply, but he says something else, you make a bizarre, overlapping sound before you and he both stop. One of your hands rubs your face, a habit you don’t have, and with the other you fidget with your skirt hem, a habit you doubt _he_ has. You wait, and Noah tries again. “There wasn’t anything else, so I just… jumped. I thought it’d just let me stay present, but…”

“But you jumped _into me_ ,” you hiss. “Can you get out?”

Your teeth find your tongue and bite down nervously; you try to move it away, and the result is a weird, frozen movement that neither of you can force. He relents first, and both your fists clench. “I don’t know,” he says, absolutely mournful. “I’m sorry, Blue.”

“Are you talking to yourself?” Adam asks. Gansey and Ronan are staring as well, Gansey politely puzzled and Ronan looking like he’d just been waiting for you to prove yourself ridiculous.

You breathe out from between gritted teeth, unsure how to answer. Noah doesn’t try to speak, and you wish bitterly that he wasn’t such a coward. The hand picking at your hem smooths it over your thigh nervously, and that is not your movement, and you react like you would to anyone not-you touching your thigh and smack the hand away. Gansey’s polite confusion escalates a few notches into actual concern, and Adam glances sideways at Ronan. “It’s Noah,” you blurt out immediately, wanting to put an end to whatever non-verbal conversation they’re having about you.

“Noah’s gone,” Ronan says with slow exaggeration, like you hadn’t noticed.

“No,” Noah says quietly through his borrowed voice. “I’m not.”

You can’t really tell the difference between your words and his besides the intent, but from the way Ronan’s brows snap together and Gansey marvels, it seems that _they_ can which is an immense relief. “Noah?” Gansey asks, beginning to circle you with a researcher’s sharp interest. “You and Blue are – sharing?”

“Sorry, Blue,” Noah murmurs again. “The line – there’s nothing else to latch onto.”

It’s possible that if you focused and visualised yourself forcing him out of your body, you could shove him out. And he would go… nowhere. To nothing. You don’t know what would happen to him if he vanished after Cabeswater had already gone without him, and you shiver to think of losing him to the hollow of null energy that waits. You clasp your hands together and rub your palms, soothing you and soothing him, and he squeezes them back, relieved. “Just until the energy returns,” you say.

“Thank you,” he says, immediately after, a conversation with yourself that Adam shifts nervously at but still seems to delight Gansey.

“So,” Ronan says, with a wicked smile that has you setting your shoulders but Noah leaning forward in anticipation. “Noah’s alive, right? We should stop this shit and take care of his bucket list.”

You attempt to say no while Noah tries to hiss _yes_ and the resulting sound is hideously reminiscent of a dog gagging. You can sense Noah’s want in a dim echo of your heart, and hesitate, dangerously close to relenting. “What is actually on your bucket list?” you ask carefully.

“I want to eat,” he answers immediately. “Pizza. Cheeseburger. Something.”

It’s such an innocent request that you hold back the little litany of nutritional value that bubbles up to your tongue. You’re aware that if you agree now, then you’re going to have three boys tag along and scientifically observe you eating, so you say, “Okay. Fine. I’ll take Noah to go and eat something, and you can all stay here checking eight decades of measured rainfall.”

You attempt to stand decisively, but two competing centres of gravity render you wobbly and not imperial. Gansey makes a gesture like he wants to help, but Noah laughs a little, making the both of you sound breathless, and then _he_ walks you to the door. You could probably resist, if you wanted, and it would probably result in your body taking a horrible, inexplicable fall down the stairs, so you let him. He’s usually solid, it can’t be this part that’s novel to him, but you notice how full your lungs are swelling, the way he keeps testing the warmth of his fingers against each other, and you think of what Ronan said. Noah’s alive.

You take him to get a pizza.

Your umbrella did not do much against the heavy rain – not when your hands occasionally faltered, and tilted the thing until you dumped its collected water onto your own head – but you make it to Nino’s in no worse shape than you usually arrive anywhere else. One advantage to trashy chic, even if you can tell when your bedraggled-ness is unintentional, others usually can’t.

Noah walks you up to the counter, orders something more substantial than what you’d eat in a day, and then falls silent. It takes you a moment, and a prompt from the cashier, to realise that he’s waiting for you to pay, and you get out your little purse bitterly. At least the cashier works a different shift to you, doesn’t recognise you, and does not have to wonder why you’ve suddenly become such a space case. You pay up, achingly resentful to be returning your pay check _back_ to Nino’s, and then you take the lead to a corner booth where people might not be able to hear you talking to yourself.

“Thanks, Blue,” Noah murmurs, and even beyond the sincerity in his – your – voice, you can feel it in you, the grateful thread of his positive energy looped twice around your heart. It’s hard to begrudge him that, and you lean back in the seat, squeezing your own hands fondly.

“It’s fine,” you say. “It’s not much to ask, really. One meal in seven years.”

He laughs, but it sounds a lot emptier this time. Someone walks past, and you duck your head to avoid their gaze, trying to just be a girl eating alone, off shift, nothing worth staring at. Not a girl with a dead boy drumming his fingers nervously over her arm until she stills them. You relinquish any active intent to move while you wait for the food, and Noah’s habits take over. He fidgets, and he checks your pulse, over and over, he puts a hand over your heart to feel it beating, and he whispers, “You’re incredible, Blue.”

You don’t know what he means, but you knock the hand away and point your head out the window. You feel your heart flutter in your chest while the heavy static of his thoughts buzz around your head, incomprehensible but for their taste: scared, excited, nervous, alive. The food arrives slower and colder than you would have brought it.

You let Noah eat, and his overwhelming appreciation drowns out any misgivings you might have had yourself. He savours every bite, he licks stray sauce from your fingers, and you wonder how many times he has watched the others eat jealously, how many times the scent of _hot_ and _good_ and _greasy_ has flooded his nose and left him hollow and hungry.

You’re also very afraid that he’s going to try and consume the entire pizza, but he gives up on that dream before you’re about to forcibly stop him, and lets out a contented sigh, shoving the rest of the plate away. There is a pleasant feeling of fullness echoed through both of you, and it’s either him or you that laces your fingers together in lazy harmony.

“So,” you say, watching the waning storm through the glass. “Rain’s letting up. Is there anything else you want to do?”

“We could go and kiss someone, together,” he says, and he’s lucky you can sense his teasing or you’d have to rap yourself on the forehead.

“You know I can’t.”

You earn yourself only a moment of consideration before Noah is back with a suggestion; “We could kiss someone that couldn’t _ever_ be your true love.” There is a very dangerous hint of mischief in your mind, before he exclaims, “ _Ronan_. Let’s go and kiss Ronan.”

“I’m sure Ronan doesn’t want to kiss _either_ of us,” you hiss, and before Noah can debate that or come up with any other horrendous ideas, you demand, “What else?”

Another empty moment. You clean up the table on instinct while you listen to the static-y buzz of Noah’s thoughts. Eventually, he asks, “Do you know how to skateboard?”

You make what you would consider a generous and valiant attempt to skateboard. You’ve never done it before, the streets are wet and you brace yourself for pain. Even when Noah takes full control, your muscles do not have his muscle memory and your limbs aren’t as long as his were and you get covered in grazes. He could probably do this as a ghost, you think, except maybe it’s not the same if falling doesn’t hurt, which is the most useless distinction anyone has ever made and you call it off fast.

All Noah really seems to want to do with his borrowed life is feel alive, to wander damp streets and measure your pulse, to fog up glass with your breath, to be full and whole and solid in an unattainable way. You indulge him, and you feel his pleasure at having blood moving through his veins, even as the day wears on and a murky dusk starts to filter through the clouds. As the sky darkens, you start to feel like the tone of the buzz in your head is shifting too, more dense, less comprehensible.

The ley line comes back in a burst, a sudden swell of energy around you that gives you pause. You’ve never felt it so keenly before, and it might be Noah’s presence in you, but you know that it’s there now, enough energy for him to latch onto and use and live off.

Noah doesn’t mention it.

When the sun has set, you start back towards Monmouth, feeling Noah try to drag your heels but not strongly resisting. Even if he can feel the trepidation in your mind the way you can glimpse his hesitance, he doesn’t suspect you’re heading to Monmouth so that you can have allies nearby in case – in case.

He likes being alive. He might not want to stop.

You try not to panic while your nails dig into your palms.

It’s in the parking lot that he exerts his equal share of autonomy, your legs stopping mid-step, pausing you a dozen metres from the front door. The Pig and the BMW are both in the lot, there are lights on in the windows, and you’re not sure if proximity to the others means a single thing right now. They could never get close enough to make a difference. “Noah,” you ask in a whisper, though there’s no one else to hear you. “Noah, the line’s back isn’t it?”

He doesn’t reply. The static in your head crackles, turning into something darker that sends hideous shivers to the base of your spine.

“You need to get out of my body.” You’re sure he knows how, in the same way he knows too many things he shouldn’t. You’re sure he doesn’t want to.

“Life,” he says, and stops like a dozen tangled thoughts died on your tongue at once. When he speaks again, your voice is a low hiss, not a tone you recognise from your own mouth. “Death is so _empty_.”

You can feel all his dangerous energy coiling in you, threatening to tighten and choke, but you do your best to stay calm, draw in a deep breath, however shaky, and to appeal to what you know is there. “Noah,” you say, pleasantly, firmly, disguising your anxious tremors even though he can feel them as well as you can feel his black-edged resistance. “You _need_ to give me my body back.”

You shudder, and the movement isn’t yours. Your nails press into your palms harder than you want to, not stopping when the pain gets sharp and raw and blood starts trickling down beneath them. The buzz in your head doesn’t feel like Noah anymore, it’s a deafening drone, a tidal wave of white noise that makes it hard to think, that wants to erase you and put itself in your place.

“Noah,” you try, voice little more than a squeak. One last appeal before you focus and force him out, before the din in your head overwhelms you. “You’re scaring me.”

There’s a roar in your head and you grasp at your mental defences, trying to summon up the image of a barrier starting inside you and pushing out and taking all his poisonous energy with it, but it’s hard to think through the sheer _noise_. Your knees hit the dirt and you don’t remember falling, you don’t know anything but the hum deep enough in your teeth to rattle them. You seize every ounce of energy that’s in you and you make a wild, desperate outwards _shove_.

There’s a silence that makes your ears ring. Your eyes had been clenched shut, and you open them as you relax your jaw, not willing to quite let go of all your tension. There’s a pair of shoes in your vision, but you don’t want to look up yet, not until you get to take full inventory of your mind and make sure every inch of it is your own. You feel so much lighter without him.

“I’m sorry,” he croaks weakly.

You take the hand he offers, feeling his cold fingers curl around yours, just for a second, before he drops it, ashamed. He doesn’t meet your eyes, and he looks like he’s seconds away from flickering out and just not coming back.

You swallow hard. Your breathing is returning to normal in slow, uneven shudders, and you’re exhausted to the core, but you don’t feel damaged, you don’t think he took anything that won’t come back. You say, as deliberately pointed as you can, “That will never happen again.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. He dares to look at you, black eyes as wide and desolate as you’ve ever seen them. “You were so nice, and I… I’m sorry.”

You would tell him to stop apologising, but you think he deserves it. Your palms are still grazed from your attempt to skateboard, and when you take his hand back, you feel how rough they are against his smooth, undamaged skin. “Okay,” you tell him. Not ‘it’s okay’, because it’s not, but because he didn’t mean to, because you know how to force him out so it _can’t_ happen again, because he’s Noah and you love him.

“Can I walk you home?” he asks, and you agree. Neither of you feel like heading into Monmouth – you’re far too drained to face Gansey and the rest – and Noah trails along as you trudge back to 300 Fox Way, head down, face ashen, chest deathly still.

You do not quite forgive him. You are never going to _forget_. But you reach out, curl your fingers around his and brush a thumb over the back of his cold hand. He squeezes back, eyeing you with something quiet and hopeful and says, “It was nice being so close to you.”

You’d laugh, but he’s still too delicately sincere. Instead you let him trace a finger over your wrist, feel your pulse and smile at you like you’re the thing he’s most grateful for. There is no response beyond winding an arm around his waist, pulling your sad, dead boy in as close as he should be able to get, and tucking your head under his chin. “For a while,” you say, warning but warm, “It was nice.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've got a [tumblr](http://kiiouex.tumblr.com/) if anyone wants to talk at me


End file.
